Tin cans filled with $10M in gold coins found buried in California - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/world/tin-cans-filled-with-10-million-in-gold-coins-dating-from-gold-rush-era-found-buried-in-california/story-fndir2ev-1226837801851 <comment><USER2> My favorite part about this is _why_ it's worth $10 million.

Because it's currency? Nope. Because it's gold? Nope. Because it's collectable? Yes!

Really highlights how price and value can come unstuck.

<comment><USER3> I remember seeing a documentary that made the connection between the evolution of money and the human race's tendency to find inherent value in "collectibles". Stones, shells, jewelry, etc, were all the basis for a currency in various times, and its only because of our shared appreciation for collectibles that this worked.

<comment><USER4> Well, currency is defined by divisibility, durability, scarcity and difficulty of forging. Humans desire a medium of exchange to better facilitate trade. The desire to trade creates the requirement for currency. The desire to collect manifests in many different forms - but the use of currency is separate (though probably related) to that.

<comment><USER5> Collectibles are also related to durability, scarcity and difficulty of forging. So I guess it's more related to currency than most would realize.

I for one had never thought about it this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't the US Treasury have a history of going around and seizing gold coins?

I forget exactly why but I think it was because they were all recalled when we went off gold standard?

I vaguely remember people finding these in deposit boxes, sharing it with the news and then magically losing it all when the treasury shows up to seize them.

Ah here we go

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)

not really related but still gold-coin mind-blowing fact

[http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137394348/-1-billion-that- nobo...](http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137394348/-1-billion-that-nobody-wants)

<comment><USER7> Just 1933 Double Eagles ($20). It's actually a fascinating story ... I'll dig up the link and post an edit shortly.

Edit: the essential story - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_double_eagle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_double_eagle)

Edit 2: Quick aside: I know the guy who found the 10 additional coins in his vault (Roy Langbord). Super nice guy. I remember when a mutual friend called me up one day and said "So Roy just found 10 1933 $20 gold coins in his vault. Are those worth anything?" ... Gulp ...

<comment><USER8> Wow that's so messed up. The Gold Reserve Act, too. It seems extremely "un- American" for the government to force people to sell their gold to the treasury. OTOH, so do a lot of things in hindsight, like the Vietnam draft. (Can you imagine US citizens today being forced to fight overseas?)

Was this a common viewpoint when the act went in, or it decades of history since colouring my vision?

<comment><USER9> It was popular at the time but it was widely assumed that the gold standard would be restored soon.

In the months prior a large percentage of country's banks had failed, and immediately beforehand all of the major financial exchanges had frozen, every federal reserve branch and almost every state had suspended banking operations. Withdrawing and hoarding gold were considered to contribute to the destabilization.

Here's an example editorial from the era:

> There will be no sympathy with the position in which these hoarders of gold > were placed. They were perfectly aware that they were helping to aggravate > an already difficult situation and they, by action taken with a view to > their person profit or advantage, were creating the very situation which > they professed to fear. Hoarders of gold on such a scale must have been > mostly men of considerable means, not subject to the blind fright of the > small currency-hoarder and not drive to money-hoarding, as has happened in > many parts of the country, through absolute breakdown of normal bank > facilities or the fear of it.

[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60712FB3E5D...](http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60712FB3E5D15738DDDA80994DB405B838FF1D3)

<comment><USER10> The trouble was that the exchange rate of dollars for gold was kept fixed, while the Fed had been inflating the currency since 1914. By 1930, the dollar had inflated by 85% or so, meaning that you could roughly double your money by trading dollars for gold.

This was why there was a giant run on the banks to trade for gold.

Similar sharp corrections happen every time an exchange rate gets fixed by law between two otherwise unrelated specie.

<comment><USER9> > The trouble was that the exchange rate of dollars for gold was kept fixed, > while the Fed had been inflating the currency since 1914.

The Federal Reserve's gold reserve requirements and the gold price of the dollar were set by Congress.

> By 1930, the dollar had inflated by 85% or so

This is not the normal meaning of the word inflation. (Nor do I know where your 85% number comes from).

> meaning that you could roughly double your money by trading dollars for > gold.

That's not what that means. If that were true then the gold standard would have failed the minute that gold was worth 1% more than its dollar equivalent.

<comment><USER10> > The Federal Reserve's gold reserve requirements and the gold price of the > dollar were set by Congress.

Yes.

> This is not the normal meaning of the word inflation. (Nor do I know where > your 85% number comes from).

Perhaps I should have said deflated. Anyhow, it comes from any of the various historical inflation calculators you can find on the internet.

> That's not what that means. If that were true then the gold standard would > have failed the minute that gold was worth 1% more than its dollar > equivalent.

I too find this surprising, but it happens again and again whenever one currency is artificially pegged to another - nothing happens for years, and then a wrenching correction.

<comment><USER10> Here's one:

[http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

It's giving me 72.7% 1913-1929.

<comment><USER9> Ok, so you subscribe to the notion that price increases equals "dollar inflation"

The fallacy in your thinking is that because prices increased, dollars were "inflated" vs. gold, in which prices would have otherwise remained fixed. But the gold supply increased dramatically over the same period.

As you point out prices increased ~75%, but at the same time US gold reserves increased nearly 3x. 2293 tons in 1913 vs 6358 tons in 1930:

[http://i.imgur.com/Sy8uzSQ.png](http://i.imgur.com/Sy8uzSQ.png)

Remember, the Fed still had a gold reserve ratio it was required to maintain. So as the money supply increased, so did its gold supply. You might seem to imply that the reserve ratio was getting smaller and smaller as part of "dollar inflation" evidenced by price level increase, while gold had a fixed quantity and value. This is not the case.

<comment><USER10> The value of gold is not determined by the quantity the Fed has. The global supply of gold did not increase 3x. The Fed kept a fixed exchange rate for gold, while inflating the currency supply. As I said, such pegged systems inevitably result in a sharp correction.

<comment><USER9> > The global supply of gold did not increase 3x.

The _government 's_ gold reserve increased 3x.

> The Fed kept a fixed exchange rate for gold, while inflating the currency > supply.

"inflating" the current supply of what? dollars? As noted the reserve ratio did not decrease. As there were more dollars there was more gold backing it.

<comment><USER10> The global supply of gold determines its value, not the supply one entity has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At the risk of stating the obvious, it's worth noting that $27,000 was a lot of money in 1849. To give a rough estimate, we're talking about the inflation- adjusted equivalent of $750,000 (give or take).

Who buries $750,000 in tin cans? Who has $750,000 in unbanked, walking-around money in the first place? The mid-19th century Walter White? Maybe someone cleaning out his bank account in anticipation of a financial apocalypse? This is the interesting part of this story, IMO. In any event, this might be one stash among several. If someone had that kind of coin lying around, my guess is that he didn't bury it all in one place.

<comment><USER12> "Who buries $750,000 in tin cans?"

Not quite the same amount, but my grandfather buried around $10k a few decades ago in his backyard. He'd migrated from Europe where he was well-off and lost a large amount of money entrusting money with a lawyer. I think he also had reason not to trust banks, but can't remember specifics.

Fast forward to Australia where, now decidedly working class, he had saved up a new sum and wanted to store it. So he buried it. Years later, before moving house, he went looking and dug over the backyard but couldn't remember where he'd buried the jars of money. Somewhere in suburban Adelaide, there is likely to be a stash of money under dirt.

<comment><USER13> Hard to believe now, but in 1933 the possession of gold by Americans was _banned_ by Executive Order 6102. After the confiscation the price of gold jumped and people got duped.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> HN in 50 years: wallet with $10 million in BitCoin from the mining era found.

<comment><USER15> maybe in 50 years, new cpus or math advancements could brute force wallets and make bitcoins worthless...

<comment><USER16> maybe in 50 years, new chemistry advancements could turn water to gold and make gold worthless...

<comment><USER17> maybe in 50 years, we will be mining asteroids for precious metals...

<comment><USER18> "In space, a single platinum-rich 500 meter wide asteroid contains about 174 times the yearly world output of platinum, and 1.5 times the known world- reserves of platinum group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum)." \-- Planetary Resources, [http://www.planetaryresources.com/asteroids/composition/](http://www.planetaryresources.com/asteroids/composition/) (take with as many grains of salt as you feel like)

But hey, I'm sure they can spare a mission to retrieve us some gold sooner or later. :P

<comment><USER17> With that much/many valuable metals there, there would have to be plenty of gold, too. I have no doubt that gold will be mined and retrieved, because it has industrial value. Not to mention its incredible economic value, and because gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YC (S14): Gold Country Metal-Detecting Drones

<comment><USER20> Dude. a segway metal detector

... I mean why not

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> $27,000 face value in $10 and $20 gold coins, each gold coin having 0.9675 ounces of gold in them ($10 coins would have had exactly half that amount of gold).

So that is about 1350 $20 gold coins or their equivalent, thus 1300 ounces of gold. At current spot prices of $1340 per ounce, about $1.75 million USD.

IF they are the $20 coins, they probably look similar to these: [http://www.apmex.com/product/9119/20-liberty-gold-double- eag...](http://www.apmex.com/product/9119/20-liberty-gold-double-eagle- cleaned)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wouldn't go public either. Somebody before them owned that property and I wonder if old relatives could give you troubles.

<comment><USER17> If it was found on your land, and the deed to that land has been in your name for several years, they wouldn't have legit claim.

<comment><USER23> I read story a while back about a plumber who found a box filled with thousands of dollars...behind a wall after he knocked a hole in it. The owner of the house offered him 10% as a finder's fee, but he demanded more and ultimately sued her. The story of the law suit led to the children of the previous home owners filing their own law suit claiming they were entitled to the money...and they won everything. The woman and the plumber received nothing.

<comment><USER24> [http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/12/whatever_happened_to...](http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/12/whatever_happened_to_the_fight.html)

<comment><USER17> I figured that some crazy shit like that would have happened somewhere. Doesn't surprise me that it was fellow Buckeyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why would you ever go public with this sort of discovery? Seems like it will just create one hell of a headache for the couple who discovered the coins.

<comment><USER21> They are being pretty cagey about who they are and where they were found. My guess, is that they went "partially" public in order to generate interest in selling these coins at auction, or via some other way to increase how much they can sell them for.

<comment><USER25> Ok, that makes more sense. Still seems like an awful lot of information to put out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like how they talk about how RARE mint coins from before 1880 are, and how there are several one of a kind finds, and many from before 1880... And then they show a coin from 1886

</comment><comment><USER27> This story made me smile. Legitimate buried treasure!

<comment><USER28> For anyone else who thought to check, no the photos do not appear to contain any GPS coordinates in the EXIF data, so they have the treasure hunting grounds all to themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In a cemetery? In a grave marked unknown? Is there Ennio Morricone music playing in the background? Is there a closeup of Blondie's cigar?

<comment><USER30> The Ecstasy of Gold [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOr0na6mKJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOr0na6mKJQ) one of my favorite movie soundtracks.

<comment><USER29> Thank you. Linked vid is not available in the US, but quick youtube search yield suitable alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _Because paper money was illegal in California until the 1870s_

My, how times have changed.

<comment><USER8> Is that sarcastic? Because in many states, having "enough" paper money is reason enough for the police to take it and harass you. Even without charging you with a crime, mere possession of cash is enough.

<comment><USER31> I was referring to "paper money" in the abstract sense, i.e., currency not tied to a commodity with a limited supply (such as gold). You're right, of course, that mere possession of sufficient quantities of literal paper money is even today _de facto_ illegal—a situation I join you in deploring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hoard of uncirculated coins in chronological order found buried under a tree? Isn't that the likely result of a robbery?

</comment><comment><USER33> This is probably one of the better way to save your money from the bankrupt state.

<comment><USER34> Only if you can anticipate that the value of the metal is still there in 100 years, or that the coins will be worth something as a collector's piece.

Imagine if these were aluminum, which was expensive in the 1870s...

([http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.ht...](http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> meh gold, now if those were dogecoins ....

<comment><USER36> Bury some now, and it could make the news in 130 years.</comment></comment>


The Right Way to do Wireframes - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSxF-pISj1w

<comment><USER2> It should be noted that this isn't a movie showing "the right way to do wireframes," it's from a talk about how there is no "right way to do wireframes," there's only the appropriate way to do wireframes at the appropriate level of fidelity for your task/project/client.

There are several "right way to do wireframes" videos on YouTube from that talk, each illustrating how a different professionals did wireframes for the same project using different processes and techniques.

Experimenting with different design techniques, processes and critiquing methods is one of the goals of my ongoing design workshops: <http://vi.to/workshop/> (if you're in Austin, TX, you should come out!)

</comment><comment><USER3> OmniGraffle Pro rocks for wireframing - I use it all the time.

Be sure to add some web-specific stuff to your Stencil library - I use the ones here, and judging from the labels in the mockups in the video, so does that guy:

<http://konigi.com/tools/omnigraffle-wireframe-stencils>

In addition, learn how to effectively use grouping and layers, especially shared layers - this is functionality that's easily missed if you just open OmniGraffle and start screwing around with it, but it's so useful. Should you have a subscription, lynda.com added a decent OmniGraffle tutorial not so long ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> While the video makes the wireframing process look like a lot of fun, the resulting UI just looks rather crammed and confusing to me.

I'm wondering whether this is a side effect of the tool in the sense that it's easy, fun and rewarding to add more elements (think FarmVille).

</comment><comment><USER5> I would love to what tool were they using to create the layout after the paper wireframes? It looks like it can make 5X better looking web pages than I can, in half the time.

<comment><USER6> Visio or OmniGraffle

<comment><USER7> It's OmniGraffle, you can catch a glimpse of the menu bar at around 0:44 or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really hate to be "that person" but while I enjoyed the video, I really could have done without the vulgarity in the music. My kid was watching.

\- Yes, I know there's a mute button, but I didn't recognize the song, so I didn't know to mute it until it was too late.

\- No, I don't shelter my kid from everything, nor do I think I should, but I also don't think a 7yr old needs to be pointlessly exposed to such things in her own home, either.

<comment><USER9> You know what I was doing when I was seven? Catching salamanders. Maybe your 7 year old daughter should be doing something other than watching youtube videos about creating website mockups. I'm all for involving your kids, and that is awesome, but it is a Saturday night, and it's rapidly becoming spring. Take your daughter out and do something fun with her.

<comment><USER8> Wow, way to jump to conclusions about my parenting abilities there. Just to put your mind at ease that my kid's not wasting her life away on the internet, we'd finished up an art project we'd been doing together and I was browsing HN while waiting for her to get out of the shower so we could watch Doctor Who. She came back in the room just as I was playing the video and came over to see what I was doing. She's very interested in learning HTML/CSS and wanted to watch. This was after spending several hours today outside playing with the neighbor kids, before, that is, she came in to do her chores (put away the clean dishes, put her laundry away, help gather up the trash) and have dinner, wherein she ate her vegetables without complaint. After Doctor Who, she read for a bit and went to bed. Tomorrow will be playing with the cousins and visiting the grandparents. She's a very smart, happy, well-behaved kid living a quite balanced and normal life. I'm very proud of her.

<comment><USER9> Whoa, I really apologize if I came across as harsh there, I seriously didn't mean any offense, just that at 7 years old, I wouldn't have even known how to process a youtube video, or what a wireframe even _was_. I guess my point was that I doubt the creator of this video ever imagined that a seven year old would be watching it, so it's a bit silly to get mad about the content of it. Also, when I made the comment I had just gotten inside from having my four year old niece help me tune up my bikes...it was really more of "hey, playing with little kids is really fun and everybody should go do it", not "GRR YOU ARE T3H SUX-ZORE!".

Sorry, that came across wrong and I apologize; my bad.

<comment><USER8> Ah, I see. No hard feelings. Thanks. :)

FRT, I wasn't "mad" about the music in the video, either, just a little annoyed by it, because it seemed pointless in context and didn't add anything to the video. There was no reason for it to be there, so I was caught off- guard by the fact that it was and so the thought to wait and watch the video later never occurred to me. A video about wireframing-doesn't sound like something you couldn't watch with a kid in the room.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10GHz at under 1V by 2005 - The future of Intel's manufacturing processes [2000] - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6 <comment><USER5> Article says: _Obviously this 8 – 10GHz clock range would be based on Intel's 0.07-micron process that is forecasted to debut in 2005. These processors will run at less than 1 volt, 0.85v being the current estimate._

Intel introduced a 65 nm (0.065 micron) process in 2006. The "Cedar Mill" Pentium 4 processor ran at 3.6 GHz at a whopping 1.3V although a small double- pumped part of the processor ran at 7.2 GHz. It could be overclocked to 4.5/9.0 GHz at 1.4V.

The discrepancy between 0.85V and 1.3V was caused by the end of Dennard scaling. Basically transistors require much more voltage than predicted and thus consume far more power than predicted. Although the transistors can technically run at 9 GHz, the resulting power density is very difficult to cool.

<comment><USER6> > Although the transistors can technically run at 9 GHz, the resulting power > density is very difficult to cool.

But nowadays we have processors with multiple cores, where sometimes you need only 1 core (and it needs to be fast). So would it be an idea to increase clock frequency for those cores, but multiplex them quickly to allow them to cool?

<comment><USER7> Nope. It is not just thermals but also memory latency. If you have four cores and each has two register files you can get 8x the bandwidth at the same latency.

That 10GHz talk was a lie on the part of Intel to intimidate people away from AMD, not only would a 10GHZ P4 melt down, but it would be stalled all the time from memory latency. So many things did not work that it was not an honest mistake.

Today there is talk of a big clock rate bump (to 200 GHZ or so) if they go to a different semiconductor, but at that point you probably need a fiber optic or terahertz wave link to memory to keep the pipeline full.

<comment><USER8> >Today there is talk of a big clock rate bump (to 200 GHZ or so) if they go to a different semiconductor, but at that point you probably need a fiber optic or terahertz wave link to memory to keep the pipeline full.

You talk as if there couldn't possibly be a benefit to an increase in speed without a corresponding increase in memory bandwidth. Whilst it wouldn't be an optimally efficient system, if we /could/ bump to 9GHz (or 200GHz), wouldn't it be worth doing so for at least some kinds of calculations, even if the memory can't keep up?

edit: Both responses were super-interesting. Don't wanna reply to both, but thanks all :)

<comment><USER9> There's a word for this: computational intensity, i.e. the ratio of useful compute operations per memory load in an app.

Are there are apps that have high computational intensity? Sure, matrix multiply is one of them. That's one of the reasons why dense linear algebra serves as the standard benchmark to determine the top 500 supercomputers in the world.

But even in HPC (high performance computing), many if not most apps actually have relatively low computational intensity (i.e. in the range of one or so compute operations per word of memory loaded). In this regime, it really doesn't make sense to grow compute out of proportion with memory bandwidth because you'll just be idling the processors.

And while I have no proof, I'd expect HPC applications to generally be more computationally intense than general consumer computing tasks. So I'd expect that computational intensity goes mostly down from here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah yes, the 10Ghz CPU. Now if you run 6 cores at 2.5Ghz each[1] is the 15Ghz? By the end of 2001 it was clear that Intel really needed to rethink things. And ever since that time we've had a series of "linear projections" which have come up short (process nodes, power levels, cpu power). Not to say we don't have some pretty awesome toys to play with that can do a lot more than machines of a decade ago could do, but every time someone takes an exponential and extends it out into the future to make a point, I stop and ask "And what if this is the end of this s-curve?" Nature hates an exponential almost as much as she hates vacuums :-)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Xeon-2620-Processor- BX80621E526...](https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Xeon-2620-Processor- BX80621E52620/dp/B007H29ECE)

<comment><USER11> There's an argument that when the current s-curve (sigmoid) starts to reach its limit we start looking for other ways of obtaining improvements, such that over time we have a series of sigmoids and overall exponential progress... until the final sigmoid.

It reminds me of Malthus thinking the economy/world was doomed because we were about to run out of trees, and then we started making significant use of coal (coal had been used for a long time, but only on a small scale).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting that while we aren't at 10 GHz quite yet, the functionality that was mentioned in the article [1][2] is here and works even on budget smartphones.

\--

[1] _Imagine being able to speak normally with your computer as you would a secretary sitting next to you and have your computer accurately and quickly take notes from your speech._

[2] _Imagine logging onto your computer not via a user name and a password but by sitting in front of your display and having it scan your face to figure out if you are allowed access to the computer._

<comment><USER13> Is this really the experience of voice recognition people have? I can't get Siri to reliably create appointments... takes about 3 tries for the voice recognition to work correctly.

<comment><USER14> Definitely. Google Home picks up everything perfectly on the level that I'm really surprised the few times it actually fails.

<comment><USER15> With Amazo nEcho this was exactly my experience for the first week. Since then, I've learned where it fails and are becoming more annoyed by it. The clear difference between current voice recognition and a real person is that they don't adapt to the way you talk. They don't learn if they misunderstood you once.

As an example, if I ask Alexa to play a certain kind of music and she plays the wrong one, I'll have to specify it further to get the correct music. Next time I'd expect her to get the clue, but she'll make the same mistake again.

Even though the most annoying thing is that chain commands don't really work with any assistant. I'd expect to give 4-5 commands at once and get them executed. Activating it for each command is very annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My first computer ran at a touch over 1MHz, and I've had a lifetime of needing (sic) to upgrade my computer every couple of years to chase or improve upon the same perceived performance levels.

It's refreshing that -- despite not having 10GHz CPU's available -- my 6yo CPU/mobo still does not feel in any way slow or in need of upgrade.

Yes, other components have offset the relatively slow pace of CPU improvements (GPU's for gamers, SSD's for everyone, etc) but it feels like we're enjoying a lengthy era of 'good enough grunt' on the CPU front (for _most_ of us).

<comment><USER17> >6yo CPU/mobo still does not feel in any way slow or in need of upgrade

The limiting factors have changed- or rather, the limiting computers have changed.

Throwing more client horsepower or internet speed at the problem can't solve the fact that the server (and to a limited extent, an internet connection) has to deliver both a huge amount of JavaScript and the (typically image/video/audio-heavy) content itself.

The client is always underutilized- the fact that smartphone apps (or rather, cached local copies of what would normally be a website) have similar performance to a modern desktop PC should speak volumes about that. It's probably why Microsoft smartphone-ized Windows; though their execution of that was awful and it didn't help that WinRT wasn't mature on release.

And raw server performance (like desktop performance) has been at a plateau for a while now as well. The lack of competition for Intel doesn't help that ( _maybe_ AMD's new processor line will start driving improvements again, but there are no hard numbers on performance; and higher-TDP ARM designs aren't currently competitive with Intel's in this space either).

Until this changes, and there's nothing to indicate it will on Intel's roadmaps, clients will continue to be good enough- it might be the first time in history where computers (since 2008 or so) are replaced because the hardware failed and not because they were insufficiently fast.

<comment><USER18> _" it might be the first time in history where computers (since 2008 or so) are replaced because the hardware failed and not because they were insufficiently fast."_

You're forgetting two things:

1 - <USER2>

2 - <USER3>

Games especially have a very long history of having a bottomless appetite for more and more powerful hardware every year as they push the limits of what's possible.

VR is dramatically upping hardware requirements, and those requirements are going to exponentially increase as consumers start to demand and expect 8k per eye, full motion, high framerate, 360 degree, 3D, wide field of view, interactive VR -- all on smaller and lighter headsets, ideally wirelessly.

<comment><USER17> >Games especially have a very long history of having a bottomless appetite for more and more powerful hardware every year as they push the limits of what's possible.

Sure, though the CPU has less to do with that. For reference, most modern games still perform just fine on first-gen i7s and second-gen i5s; the most recent of those was released 6 years ago. GPUs are a replaceable part where CPUs are not.

At least GPU technology is still advancing in big ways, though I think that's more a property of how they're built, what their functions are, and (especially for higher-end cards) what kind of power budget users are willing to accept. It's unusual for the newest mid-range card not to match the previous high-end card.

Intel, on the other hand, has never released a CPU with TDP over 150W (AMD had a couple at 220W), even though most in the overclocking community know that 5GHz is regularly attainable on modern CPUs. But that that's been mostly true since 2013.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember reading this news (and perhaps even this exact article - <USER4> certainly feels familiar) back when it was released and being so excited as a 15 year old gaming nerd. It really was a time when stuff was changing so rapidly - and those changes were resulting in massive, really obvious performance gains - that you couldn't help but just look forward to where it might go if the pace continued. Everything was about the big frequency numbers and it was easy to buy into the hype.

It'd be interesting to know the sort of IPC delta between a Netburst architecture and Kaby Lake. Also, it'd be interesting to know how theoretically fast you'd have to push Netburst to see the same performance as Kaby Lake.

<comment><USER20> This is from 2011, but it should give you an idea: [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/processor- architecture-b...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/processor-architecture- benchmark,2974-15.html) .

tl;dr: Core i7-2600k @ 3GHz, is about 2,67x faster than a Pentium 4 HT 660 (Prescott ua) @ 3Ghz. In the benchmark they tested single core, and equal clock, to keep everything as level as posible.

As for single core performance, Kaby Lake would be between 30 to 40% better than Sandy Bridge (which could be called the peak improvement architecture in the Core i brand), so it'd be about ~3,5x faster than the Prescott based chips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised Intel made this bold claim so late. When I was in college in the late 90's, my computer architecture prof said the physics problems get really hard starting around 4 to 8 Ghz. He said it as it was common knowledge in the industry.

<comment><USER22> Damn. The linked article says nothing about Intel claiming 10ghz, and the author is just speculating that, applying a 9x speed increase to Netburst (the same 9x they saw with the P6), 10ghz should be doable. But then the link at the bottom, "FACTS FROM INTEL" specifically mentions 10ghz, presumably from the horse's mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just to give a little intuition for exactly how fast your CPU runs (assuming ~3 GHz), a single cycle takes about as much time as it takes a photon to travel from your monitor to your eyeball.

<comment><USER24> 299,792,458 meters/second ÷ 3,000,000,000/second = 9.99 cm

Just how close are you sitting to your monitor?

<comment><USER23> Perhaps I need glasses. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The funny part is I'm reading this article almost 2 decades later, on a CPU that's probably throttling itself down to the 1.4 ghz level... the top of the line then.

<comment><USER26> And yet, it's probably over a factor 10 faster and a factor 10 more efficient. (random numbers, I don't actually know how cpus have scaled or if they can accurately be compared)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anecdotally, I've heard that Everquest 2 (released 2004) is still impossible to run at 60FPS with all graphical settings maxed; the devs attempted to future-proof it with speculative high-end graphics options, but they optimized for high-GHz processors which never arrived.

<comment><USER28> No single GPU could run Crysis (2007) at 1080p / 60fps until last year!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Over a decade later, even overclockers haven't managed to reach 10GHz --- but some have come close:

[http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd- fx-8150-overclock-9ghz-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd- fx-8150-overclock-9ghz-bulldozer,15853.html)

At 10GHz, light travels approximately 3cm between each period of the clock.

Note that transistors which operate above 10GHz are not rare and used in microwave applications; as I understand it, the difficulty is in creating logic circuits with them and at a scale suitable for a CPU.

<comment><USER30> > 10GHz, light travels approximately 3cm between each period of the clock

Light doesn't change speed, so this statement confuses me.

<comment><USER31> > Light doesn't change speed, so this statement confuses me.

Practically speaking, it does change speed. The speed of light in a vacuum is fixed, but it varies based on what it's traveling through.

The propagation velocity of an EM signal in RG coax cable is 80% of c*, PCB traces can be as low as 50% and somewhat surprisingly both fiber optic cable and cat6 cable are about the same, ~60-70%. I don't know if there is any good public information about the velocity factor with modern CPU transmission lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I see three main failed predictions:

      - 10 GHz
      - long pipelines, I think we're currently at around 14 stages, which is more than P6 but less than Netburst (Pentium 4)
      - EUV lithography is still not a thing at 10 nm

Die I miss any important failed predictions?

</comment><comment><USER33> Slightly off topic, this reminded me of the whole over-clocking scene in the 2000's, being excited over these things. :)

[http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php](http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKN4VMOenNM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKN4VMOenNM) (the world record at 8.429GHz)

</comment><comment><USER34> > Realistically speaking, we should be able to see NetBurst based processors > reach somewhere between 8 – 10GHz in the next five years before the > architecture is replaced yet again

was a statement made by anandtech. Did Intel actually strive for those numbers?

<comment><USER35> Haven't we reached the point of diminishing returns regarding processor speed? I believe this to be true for the consumer market.

<comment><USER36> Why would that be the case? If we could run CPUs at 50Ghz with no problems why wouldn't we?

Edit: I probably exaggerate. I just mean that higher clock speed still have benefits.

<comment><USER37> I think this "conveyor example" from Intel is a good explanation as to why: [https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/02/19/why-has- cp...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/02/19/why-has-cpu- frequency-ceased-to-grow)

I think that you would cease to see any acceleration from increased clock speed unless you also sped up other parts of the processor / computer.

I think your sentiment is correct. If we can take advantage of higher clock speeds, then why not do it?

<comment><USER38> Reminds me of something Seymour Cray (allegedly) once said: "Anyone can build a fast processor - the trick is to build a fast computer around it". Given the performance boost an SSD gives, I imagine there's some room left for improving overall system architecture without increasing the clock speed of the CPU or replacing the CPU at all.

(Caveat lector: Quoting from memory here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting. One day, maybe one day, Intel will release a desktop processor that is worth upgrading to from my 6 year old 2600K. One that doesn't cost $1723, that is.

<comment><USER40> Define worth?

They have released a process that is worth upgrading to: [https://ark.intel.com/products/97129/Intel- Core-i7-7700K-Pro...](https://ark.intel.com/products/97129/Intel- Core-i7-7700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_50-GHz)

[https://ark.intel.com/products/52214/Intel- Core-i7-2600K-Pro...](https://ark.intel.com/products/52214/Intel- Core-i7-2600K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz)

There are a massive host of improvements between those two processors. Each release since Sandy Bridge has continued to increase performance between 5 to 10% in most tasks and more in some specifics. Over 4 releases that is a noticeable effect.

That processor in the US is 350 Dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, what was the reason CPUs could not scale vertically (higher frequency)? Temperature? Stability?

<comment><USER42> Technically it was heat but mostly it was due to (i) Economics, there was less demand for faster clock speed. Otherwise more research could have gone towards solving heat problem. (ii) Each cycle of CPU was more efficient with ability to execute multiple instructions in a single cycle and with more efficient instruction sets.

Surprisingly, power consumption also made huge impact. As tablets and laptops got more popular than desktop battery life became a major concern and thus TDP played major role in research.

Try this fun experiment: Underclock your CPU by half a GHz and see if you notice the difference in your day to day work.

<comment><USER43> Single-thread performance is as important as it has ever been.

That a secretary typing a document or someone who only spends time on facebook doesn't notice the difference is irrelevant- consider, for example, the massive capital outlay by the financial industry to have servers located as closely to the world's trading hubs as possible. If they are willing to pay whatever it takes to shave milliseconds off a round trip, faster CPUs are a part of that equation.

<comment><USER38> > faster CPUs are a part of that equation.

I think the GP did not debate that but pointed out the for CPU speed/throughput, clock speed is only part of it. Adding functional units and allowing the CPU to process more instructions in parallel can have a big impact, so can e.g. larger cache, better branch prediction and so forth.

If you give people faster CPUs, they will cheer and find something to keep them busy. ;-) And for some people, there is no such thing as "fast enough". But for a fairly large share of desktop/mobile users, the is not the limiting factor as much as memory bandwidth and I/O.

<comment><USER43> I don't disagree with that statement in a general sense. But what earns Intel its money and marketplace dominance? The cheap Celeron/Pentium-class chips sold in bargain laptops & Best Buy specials? Or the high-end, single-thread performance chips?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The current generation of Intel chips can be overclocked comfortably to 5ghz with a simple water cooling setup.

<comment><USER18> You only have to risk frying your computer and destroying your data if the water cooler springs a leak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Glad to see the correct answer at the top here. The "fireball" section of the P4 did run at double the frequency as the rest of the processor. So internally that was considered the processor frequency.

One of my first contributions to the Linux kernel was a bugfix to the bogomips routine. It stored the result in a 32-bit variable and our 8+ GHz chilled test machines would cause that to wrap.

It was then determined that the processor would be marketed using the slow clock frequency. This was the right answer, but it didn't feel like it at the time.

That article predates the marketing change. It might have made them realized they needed that change.

</comment><comment><USER46> We may have to move beyond Silicon to get 10Ghz.

For General Purpose IPC Single threaded performance, we basically had little to no improvement since Sandy Bridge apart from Clock Speed. SSD / IO Speed helped to fill the performance improvement gap in the past 4 - 5 years.

Now we are waiting for the next big improvement to come. If there are any.

</comment><comment><USER47> Best so far is 8.7Ghz with AMD chip which is a bit old now. But Kaby Lake is 7.3Ghz. All using liquid nitrogen of course. [http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php#js- freq_all](http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php#js-freq_all)

</comment><comment><USER48> I've always wondered why the need for ghz, isn't mips what you're looking for. wouldn't a 50mhz 1000 core cpu do well with decent parallelism in a compiler?

how many cycles does the average method/function/procedure need anyway?

<comment><USER49> The standard response is to quote Amdahl's Law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law)

If 90% of your runtime can be done in parallel, you still have to wait for that last 10%. You can hit this limit with 10 cores (1 processing the 10% that's serial, the other 9 processing the 90% in parallel). If you throw 1000 cores at the problem, you'll have 999 cores processing the 90% in parallel, each performing 0.09% of the workload, but you'll still have 1 core doing the 10% that's serial. Those 999 cores will be idle for 99% of the time, waiting for that last core to finish.

The counter-argument is Gustafson's Law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustafson%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustafson%27s_law)

This says that people don't choose a particular task, then wait for a computer to do it. Instead, the choice of which task to perform depends on what the computer can manage. Hence the user of a 1000 core machine will choose to do different tasks than the user of a 10 core machine, or a 1 core machine.

Whilst Gustafson's Law is clear from experience (a PlayStation 4 isn't used to run Pacman _really fast_ ), Amdahl's Law is the one that's relevant for compilers: a "sufficiently smart compiler" can alter your code in all sorts of ways, but the resulting executable must still perform the same task (otherwise it's a bug!).

There might be an approach based on e.g. writing an abstract specification and _deriving_ a program which is suitable for the given hardware, but that's a long way off (for non-trivial tasks, at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What ever happened to quantum computing, DNA computing, and optical computing?

Are consumers ever going to see a general purpose computer based on any of those technologies on their desktops?

<comment><USER50> > Quantum computing

Still gradually in development, presumably coming someday. It's very difficult to get quantum systems of any real complexity to not decohere before they can do useful computation.

> DNA computing

DNA-based storage apparently exists in the lab and might exist someday: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/04/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/04/microsoft-experiments-with-dna-storage-1000000000-tb-in-a- gram/). Current costs are something like $40 million/GB, so that'll have to come down "a bit". I don't know of anyone doing computation with DNA, biology seems too slow for that.

> Optical computing

It's very difficult to make light interact with other light (which is _sine qua non_ for computation) except inside a material with electrons, where you get significant losses and there's no real advantage over just plain old transistors. Not likely to become a useful technology IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It is about having vision really. Appreciate their vision from back then, and embrace what they have achieved so far

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, where can I get mine?

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, this would be less then, wouldn't it?

</comment><comment><USER54> Intel can't beat the heat.</comment>


Wordpress Exploited – 2.8.4 Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/wordpress-exploited-284-release

<comment><USER2> This is practically content free. If there really is a known security hole in WordPress, I for one would like to know what it is, so I can patch my sites. Vague burblings about XSS just don't cut it. After all, it's possible that his site was exploited prior to 2.8.4 and he just noticed the problems (or the attack has just become active) now.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a good thing they've spent so much time focusing on a photo editor!

See tptacek's comment about WordPress security <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806760>

</comment><comment> onreact-com Yeah. I'll consider Drupal as well for blogging. Are there some good themes for Drupal and does it support pingback?</comment>


NTP Pool Bad Actors: The Rising Sophistication of Network Scanning - <AUTHOR> http://netpatterns.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-rising-sophistication-of-network.html <comment><USER2> It seems like many aren't quite getting what's going on here...here's a brief overview:

Shodan.io fancies itself as a search engine where you can search for IOT things (webcams, refrigerators, etc) that are on the internet.

They have no technical issues doing this in the IPV4 space, because it's easy enough to scan every single address in the space.

This isn't practical for IPV6. So, it seems they wanted a way to identify every IOT device in the IPV6 space without having to scan all of it.

At least one approach they found was to join the ntp.org pool[1], and effectively donate server time. Since pool.ntp.org is the default NTP server listed for many linux distros (and thus, probably IOT devices), they now are getting live connections from the exact devices they want to index on their search engine.

Once you connect, they scan you back on 100 ports on so (ports unrelated to NTP) to see if you are a webcam, router, or whatever else they want to put in their index.

Pretty shady. Kind of like volunteering for a charity so that you can raid their internal mailing list for spam purposes.

[1][http://www.pool.ntp.org/join.html](http://www.pool.ntp.org/join.html)

<comment><USER3> I don't really see what's shady about it. If you connect to a server, it's accepted and expected that they'll get your IP address.

<comment><USER2> They run a port scan against your ip and publish the discovered info publicly. You may find that okay, others don't.

<comment><USER4> Well then I guess people should stop relying on their IP address being one of many in a vast space for security and implement proper authentication instead.

It's not like your service has to expose all its secrets to an unauthenticated client sending you a GET / HTTP/1.1.

<comment><USER2> That's not the irk. Rude behavior isn't suddenly polite just because I have great security. The spirit of donating server time to the ntp.org pool is not to use the data for your own self promotion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The lesson here, I think, is that security intuitions developed in an IPv4 world with NAT everywhere may need re-examining in an IPv6 world.

If your device has a publicly routable IP address, it should probably be behind a firewall. If it's not behind a firewall, it's going to get scanned. Relying on security through address space size is stupid.

> What was most puzzling was the fact that the devices that were targeted had > randomized IPv6 addresses and were not published in DNS or any public > record. For all intents and purposes they were hidden safely within my lab > network.

That is just wrong, and it's wrong in a very glaring, obvious way: The devices were not "hidden safely within [his] lab network", because he was not using NAT. They were connected to the internet with publicly routable IP addresses, which they were using to communicate with other hosts on the internet.

Edit: That being said, it's a great writeup, and some good technical work was done to figure out what was going on, and I enjoyed reading it. But the starting premise seemed to be "how could this be happening, my devices are hidden!" and I feel like it should have been "oh, it makes sense that someone would do this since my devices are no longer hidden".

<comment><USER6> Even if they were NATed I'd assert they weren't safely hidden but that's a more obscure discussion.

<comment><USER5> You're quite right; people significantly overestimate the safety of NAT in my experience.

But what I was getting at is that however illusory the safety of NAT is, the author seemed to be instinctively assuming that his IPv6 devices had it, because we've spent 20 years training ourselves to assume that everything is behind NAT. It's a new world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not really seeing a vulnerability here. The entire IPv4 internet is scanned probably hundreds of times a day. Was anyone really counting on IPv6 addresses being longer to add security?

[http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2015/02/ipv6-s...](http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2015/02/ipv6-security- myth-4-ipv6-networks-are-too-big-to-scan/)

<comment><USER8> A machine with a random address that makes no (direct) contact with the outside world will be a lot harder to find in a 64-bit address space then a 32. As soon as it talks to the outside world though (by talking to public NTP servers in this case) that difference is rendered moot.

<comment><USER9> Unless it's using Privacy Extensions in which case it will change it's outbound IP in a matter of hours and once again be lost in the huge address space.

Unfortunately privacy extensions are not enabled by default on most linux distributions and server operating systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting post, I've suggested to Brad that he consider probes with a decreasing ttl in the packet to see if the harvesting is happening at an interstitial node or directly on the ntp server. If you had access to a compromised Juniper router it would be straight forward to add a rule to mirror packets which were headed to the NTP pool addresses.

Oddly after being an unwitting participant in one of the NTP amplification attacks I set up my own stratum 0 NTP server based on the beaglebone black, the adafruit GPS module, and the PPS time keeper code. So all of my machines only talk internally for time, although initial installs still use what ever the distro packed into them. I brought up Debian on a Dragonboard 410c and it sets the time via an NTP call during the initial startup process. (or fails to set the time as NTP is blocked egress/ingress from the firewall)

<comment><USER11> I have been interested in using the dragonboard with linux as a small controller for some embedded things, how is that working for you?

On subject, I have always though having a master internal ntp under strict controls should be used, so good on you for that, I dont see ntp payed attention to far too often in the enterprise.

<comment><USER12> I have a Dragonboard that I haven't really had a chance to do anything with yet. However I've noticed two main drawbacks:

1\. You have to use some awful hacks if you want to ssh into it (IIRC it ignores ARP requests for some reason) 2\. The GPS only works on Android

That said it's still a nice upgrade hardware-wise from something like a Raspberry Pi. The software support is just spotty in a few areas

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If someone is detecting which IPv6 addresses are in use in your range from NTP requests, that implies they are all talking to the external NTP servers directly.

Surely if all your internal hosts are talking directly to the external NTP servers you are doing it wrong? My gateway box sets itself by pool.ntp.org and the internal ones set themselves by it. I thought that was how you _should_ do things (even if it isn't a rule, it is only polite to try not overuse a public resource).

 _> These addresses are 128 bits in length_

Only 64 are relevant here: once you make outgoing connections from any address a scanner knows there is at least one active host in that /64 and there may be more. Though of course a 64 bit address space is still impractical to scan.

<comment><USER13> > Surely if all your internal hosts are talking directly to the external NTP > servers you are doing it wrong? My gateway box sets itself by pool.ntp.org > and the internal ones set themselves by it. I thought that was how you > should do things (even if it isn't a rule, it is only polite to try not > overuse a public resource).

Depends on how many internal hosts you have, and ease of configuring them (there is a DHCP option for ntp server, but not everything will use it), and available hardware to setup ntp servers: ideally you would have each client syncing from three servers so the clients drop a broken server.

<comment><USER8> _> ideally you would have each client syncing from three servers _

For a small network (a home or small office network for instance) you likely have one incoming router anyway, so if that dies clock setting is the least of your worries until it comes back up, meaning setting the internal hosts by that one clock is as fine as anything else.

For a larger network you have redundant everything, including edge servers that can act as your multiple NTP sources for internal hosts rather than every internal host poking the public pool.

<comment><USER13> > For a small network (a home or small office network for instance) you likely > have one incoming router anyway, so if that dies clock setting is the least > of your worries until it comes back up, meaning setting the internal hosts > by that one clock is as fine as anything else.

I'm not so much worried about the router dieing and losing sync with the outer world; but about the router's clock going wonky: I've seen computers where something got initialized wrong and they were 30 minutes slow after 10 hours (reboot helped in that case, but sometimes it's the oscillator is just too far off)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it is pretty freaky, I think the point of Shodan scanning IPV6 devices that use the default pool is to detect linux-based IoTs that use the default NTP settings, which is kind of the reason why Shodan exists.

It is unlikely that Shodan is going to hack your Raspberry Pi specifically because then people will go after them. But hackers of many hat colors will use the freely available information it gathers for their own purposes, so act with this in mind.

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't this article just saying that "security through obscurity" doesn't work, and you can't count an obscure IPv6 address to keep you hidden?

If your server isn't meant to be contacted by the world, then put it behind a firewall. Don't count on an obscure address to keep you hidden.

<comment><USER16> For folks only looking for a cautionary tale, who don't worry about larger security trends and only want to keep their own machine safe, that's a fine takeaway.

For people who do care about network security, it is a very interesting post for a few reasons.

If someone is harvesting IPs from NTP queries sent to Debian infrastructure for intelligence gathering, that in itself is a big deal.

It is also a somewhat novel technique - if an attacker is placed such that they can see the first NTP queries sent by a new install, they are well placed to target that device before it is fully hardened/patched, because they likely see some of the first packets sent by that install. It is really rather clever.

It also points to the sort of correlation we need to be getting better at - orchestration isn't just for devops weenies anymore, and this sort of thing is only going to become more sophisticated.

I've been noodling about with making a tool for making this sort of analysis easier, but there are a number of problems to fix, not least of which is the sheer volume of data generated watching the wire, even on my home network (which is a bit absurd for your average home, but tiny compared to a business of any size).

<comment><USER7> > If someone is harvesting IPs from NTP queries sent to Debian infrastructure > for intelligence gathering, that in itself is a big deal.

Debian doesn't run the NTP pool.

<comment><USER17> Debian does use [0-3].debian.pool.ntp.org as the default NTP servers, however. Debian (and Ubuntu) also start up the NTP daemon as soon as the client is installed -- even before one has a chance to change those default servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is (starting to be) discussion on a few mailing lists as well, including email@example.com [0].

[0]: [http://lists.ntp.org/pipermail/pool/2016-January/007758.html](http://lists.ntp.org/pipermail/pool/2016-January/007758.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice evidence for why site operators should be running their own NTP servers. If you run 1 server set per site which doesn't even need a strong local clock, you mitigate this information leakage.

I'd think this is something that most network designers/engineers would get. That said, I'd be a rich man if I had a nickel for every time I saw NTP misconfigured.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.ntpsec.org/](https://www.ntpsec.org/)

<comment><USER20> Improving the security of the Internet's go-to time transfer protocol is certainly useful. However, switching to a different protocol would not mitigate this port scanning attack. According to this researcher, just sending an empty packet to an NTP server's port is sufficient to result in a port scan back.

<comment><USER19> ... Which is the sort of bugs ntpsec effort is fixing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unless I missed something in the article, I'm not sure this is odd or malicious behavior. The NTP servers know your IPs because you sent packets to them from those IPs. So you basically told them what your big random 128-bit IPv6 address is.

And the fact that they sent packets back to you (after you sent them packets) is not surprising either. However, if you can show that a full-blown port scan occurred after you sent them packets, then that would be odd. I did not see evidence of that in the article... did I miss that?

<comment><USER22> Yes, I think you missed that. From the article:

"It takes less than five seconds for your address to be harvested and scanned. The entire scan takes less than one second and scans over 100 common TCP and UDP ports. "

<comment><USER21> OK. I'd like to see a full packet capture. And technically, the address was not 'harvested'. He gave it to them when he sent them packets. The story strikes me as very dramatic and over the top because of statements such as that.

<comment><USER23> Look in to what shodan is, its a service dedicated to portscanning the internet. With ipv4 you can easily scan every ip, with ipv6 you need some mechanism to discover addresses. This very much looks like they joined the ntp pool soley to harvest and portscan addresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We've gone from anonymous people scanning you, to semi-trusted people scanning you.

The mantra of the new Internet is "Trust no one". :(

<comment><USER8> I don't see the people running hosts in pool.ntp.org's pool as any less anonymous than the general internet at large.

<comment><USER24> You trust them to give you a correct time. That's at least a bit more trust than you give any other random IP address.

<comment><USER15> Technically, you're trusting that collectively they are giving you the correct time, so you're not putting full trust in every single server. A rogue server with incorrect time will be ignored.

<comment><USER24> Does it violate your trust to scan anyone who does NTP queries?

a) I never trusted them, so this is fine and to be expected

b) I sort of trusted them, so this is surprising and not polite.

I lean towards (b).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So I finally found an NTP server where I can set the update interval to a few seconds.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is interesting, but really, why are you not running a firewall on incoming requests to the NTP port? No fuss, no muss, no scan.

<comment><USER8> This isn't talking about incoming request for the NTP service - it is fuller scans to valid IPv6 addresses that have been harvested because hosts using those addresses talked to an NTP service that logged them.</comment></comment>


LG UltraFine 5K Display can become unusable when near a router - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/30/lg-ultrafine-5k-display-router-disconnecting/ <comment><USER2> I got my monitor today and it doesn't work. LG technical support confirmed the following:

1\. Monitor does not work near a router.

2\. MacBook must be to the left or in front of the monitor.

3\. Thunderbolt cable shipped with monitor might be defective.

LG is shipping me a new cable to try, but I only have 14 calendar days to initiate a return.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a Thunderbolt 3 problem last year with Dell's TB15 docking station that resulted in a recall. I believe the postmortem on that was the wireless card in the laptop causing interference on the TB3 IC.

I wonder if this is a similar issue?</comment>


The state of the art of web devlopment is a free chess server - <AUTHOR> http://lichess.org

<comment><USER2> true. much love to lichess. easily the most sophisticated chess platform out there (that i know of), elegant and wonderful community love.</comment>


BitTorrent Piracy Doesn't Affect US Box Office Returns, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-doesnt-effect-us-box-office-returns-study-finds-120210/ <comment><USER4> Whenever I hear statements like that (that the musical/movie industry is growing _thanks to_ piracy, etc), the only logical question for me is - <USER2> are they fighting it so hard then_?

I mean, they are fighting the various P2P sites and users for _years_ , spending large amounts of money on various legal fights and lobbyists. The wouldn't do this if it really didn't hurt their sales.

People can say "they are doing it because they are stupid". Well, maybe they are, but they also have _far_ better statistics than we have. They know far better what is hurting their sales.

I am not really arguing for copyright industry here, but I am just saying - <USER3> it didn't hurt them, they wouldn't be fighting it _so hard_.

<comment><USER5> If they did nothing, their silence would be taken as assent. There would be a critical point of social acceptance past which the number of people actually paying for their product would rapidly drop to an unsustainable level. They work to keep it from reaching that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People talk about the "business model" of the film and music industries.

But they have a "moral model", which is to present copyright itself as a moral proposition. Everything about why it is hard for us to stop the never-ending creation of new laws and international treaties that attack freedoms of computer use and internet use is due to this moral model.

It follows that empirical studies proving the "harmlessness" of piracy are largely irrelevant.

<comment><USER7> It all depends on the purpose of copyright in the first place. In the US, at least, copyright law stems from one section of the Constitution:

      The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and
      useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
      exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The stated purpose is clear: to promote progress. It's not difficult to evaluate the current environment in terms of this initial purpose, and I imagine it would be tough to build a case that piracy is stunting artistic progress. (And thus difficult to justify laws that inhibit file-sharing.)

Somewhere along the way, people began to confuse the concept of promoting- artistic-progress with ensuring-people-can-make-millions-of-dollars. These are two unrelated things. The success of some company's (or some artist's) business model has nothing to do with the progress of the arts in general. So I agree with you: the amount of monetary "damage" caused by piracy is entirely irrelevant.

What really matters is the moral argument that piracy equates to theft, or that piracy hinders artistic progress. I don't think it does. But if anyone disagrees, I'd love to hear your argument here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3577454>

<comment><USER6> It doesn't really matter what the purpose of copyright was in the first place. History is interesting, but it doesn't determine our understanding in the present of what is moral and what is not moral.

Also, copyright is world-wide, so what it says in the US Constitution isn't all that interesting to anyone not in the US.

And when I say "irrelevant", I mean it is irrelevant to public debate. The copyright industry's side of the debate about copyright enforcement is mostly the following, based on what I called the "moral model":

* We created something * We own what we created * Someone is stealing it

This message can just be repeated over and over and over again. Someone's report that internet piracy might not reduce cinema takings completely fails to address the above moral claim.

So the report can be ignored, and the moral claim can be repeated again. And again.

<comment><USER7>
      * We created something * We own what we created * Someone is stealing it

The content industry derives both the 2nd and 3rd part of that argument from the law. They do not own something just because they say so. Nor is copying the equivalent of stealing just because they say so. They are basing their moral arguments purely on the law, which _defines_ ownership and theft.

So when they tell the public, "It's stealing!", that's nothing but marketing. When the chips are down and they're standing in court, they argue based on legal precedent. I don't think we can argue _against_ them on any other grounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ...like rational, scientifically backed arguments, will burst MPAA/RIAA's bubble. For anyone on the outside, the findings in this article are common sense. So is the fact that MPAA/RIAA's business model is severely broken. Yet, that doesn't matter when you have Washington on your payroll. Unfortunately.

<comment><USER9> Sad but true. If rational sense had any place in legislation, marijuana wouldn't be illegal, the DMCA would never have been passed, and the __AA groups would never have tried to serve a dead grandmother and a network printer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the logic behind waiting to release Hollywood movies outside of the US?

<comment><USER11> Getting distribution is hard because screens for english titles are more limited abroad. You need to prove out the title before foreign theaters will pick it up. Obviously this doesn't apply to blockbusters which now often have global release dates.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. Having lived overseas, that explains why it would take ages for a film to arrive (sometimes 1 year). Many films would never arrive...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> US Movies are often released outside of the US to see how well they go, so that an appropriate marketing spend can be done. Various small countries, and small towns will go first. Like New Zealand.

If the movie does ok, then that is more evidence for the investors to ok the massive marketing spends. But if their trial marketing fails (and their 10 different versions of it), then the movie will be released changed or released in one of the spare slots; the slots that they need to fill in the movie theatres to keep their quadmopoly(if they don't take up the screens with some crappy movie then some independent might get a shot at a screening instead).

<comment><USER13> I believe the term for a "quadmopoly" is an oligopoly: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A more relevant question would be how piracy affects movie rentals and DVD/Blu-Ray sales. You can't go out to see a pirated movie, so box offices sales and pirated movies are apples and oranges.

</comment><comment><USER15> tl;dr

Study tries to find out if piracy has a larger effect in foreign box office returns the longer the length of time between the domestic and foreign release. Answer: Yes.

<comment><USER16> Given the finding that piracy demonstrably affects foreign returns, and that the researchers found no correlation to domestic returns, I think the article headline and interpretation is inaccurate. Not finding evidence is not the same as finding there's no effect, particularly when you've just found evidence of a related effect.

<comment><USER17> I think part of the reason for the title is that the study suggests that piracy is a symptom, not a cause. They are saying if the studios were releasing worldwide at the same time, that piracy would be largely nullified (at least my read of it)</comment></comment></comment>


Parable of the Stones - <AUTHOR> http://www.rexblog.com/2013/04/24/49208

<comment><USER2> The idea that Jobs is reacting against is essentially the "Great Man" theory of history as applied to business:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory>

This idea states that it is the "great men" who are responsible for making the world we see today, through their force of will, powerful ideas and charisma.

And as it happens, that's how the public sees Steve Jobs today. So it's good to hear him tell a story that reminds us that he had a very different perspective on this idea.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about that. He was reacting against the mythology of the idea and ignorance of execution. It still might be (and I would argue in some cases it was with him) that there exist "great men" such that if you remove them, the product is wildly shittier, whereas if you remove almost anybody else in the process, the product is not necessarily that much worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can Apple survive without Jobs? Who is shaking up the can until the product is polished?

Large organizations often take very smart people and very good ideas and then produce crap. The most successful organizations usually have one very strong leader with visionary ideas yet an incredible attention to product detail. Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Salesforce, Facebook... take away that one leader and they struggle. Because large organizations thrive on teamwork and not taking any big risks (if you are right, everyone basks in your glory, if you are wrong, your ass is on the line.)

Apples latest maps application was far from polished. Then their CEO fired the one guy who seemed willing to shake things up. I am looking forward to their next big thing, to see how polished it is.

<comment><USER5> May I ask how you know that Tim Cook, Jony Ive, or any other Apple exec isn't "shaking up the can"?

As a matter of fact their CEO fired the one guy who wasn't willing to shake things up. In fact, I think he was fired for that very reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some time ago I heard an 82-year-old lady talk about how her parents' marriage had been a happy one. She said that the whole time she was growing up, her mother kept a newspaper clipping on the family icebox that described marriage as a process by which "two stones are by friction made smooth". It was only later that she saw this as a sign that her parents did have their difficulties, and that her mother must have kept it there as a reminder.

The point is, these insights are proverbial.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of a signature I once saw on a forum: "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.". As it turns out, that's actually proverbs 27:17.

</comment><comment><USER8> A nice parable, but for anyone who has used a rock tumbler credibility is lost when you get polished stones in one day. It makes me wonder if the story is completely fabricated, or changed for brevity.

<comment><USER9> I laughed at that as well. Mine, back in 197x, took weeks. My son's, bought in 2009, took the same amount of time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As much as I have a personal dislike for Jobs, I think this is advice that a lot of people fail to see value in. Having people who care standing up for their opinion and taking whatever comes out on top will often lead to the best product.

People need to stop avoiding friction between opinions and ideas and instead embrace it. That's how great things come about.

</comment><comment><USER11> Weird to see all the comments criticizing the mention of Steve Jobs and the use of the word parable instead of people just concentrating on what this post is about, just an anecdote that may or not relate to your leadership style. Who cares of who made it and yes I understand the title was modified to sound more appealing but everything in life is modified to attract attention.

<comment><USER12> If the author wants us to discuss the point he should get to it faster rather than droning on about apple stock and product pipelines.

300 words isn't so much that it's cumbersome to read, but it definitely primed me to think that his point was somehow specific to apple and investing when it wasn't at all. I'm not surprised that people have decided to nitpick it.

<comment><USER11> Yes but instead of nitpicking to criticize maybe we could use the same skill to filter out the bad parts and get to the good parts. I'm not saying I agree with the way the author presented the information, he thought it was the best way but that doesn't mean I have to completely ignore what he wrote based on that fact. It's pretty obvious to see in this post the relevant part to HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The part I liked best was:

"And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it."

I think this really relates to the hacker community because it shows that you can start with SOMETHING (Just go try something), and then later you can change it and modify it. The idea you start with is never the idea that comes out on the other side.

I have a seemingly simple, offline business that we had to pivot more than once to get it just right. We used feedback from our customers (and more importantly, would-be customers) to evolve and succeed. Thanks for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's the video: [http://abdophoto.tumblr.com/post/48782980706/steve-jobs- on-t...](http://abdophoto.tumblr.com/post/48782980706/steve-jobs-on-teamwork)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have seen that video and it is a treasure of management advice. Other things: 1) When asked how he learnt to manage such a large company and aspects like finance, etc, he said (paraphrased): "as you do it, you just learn it". Makes starting and running a company sound more natural. 2) The other thing I remember he said: When sales guys get promoted to the level of CEO, they don't understand that their company runs because of a product and that is how they provide value to their customers, instead they just think of more sales channels, wider markets, etc. In doing so, they kill the entire process that created the company's product in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is excellent advice. This parallels with finding rocks once polished then putting them through the machine again during hiring.

</comment><comment><USER17> Implying that the Job's quote can promise future innovation is a bit of a stretch. It is a good story, I agree. Without the occasional frictions and collisions, it is almost impossible to make a group of highly talented people produce great results.

Having said that, just having a highly talented team without good leadership is disastrous. The role of the leader is more important than the sum of talents of the team. He inspires the team to a common vision and ignites passion. The term 'passionate team' becomes meaningless without a shared vision.

<comment><USER18> What makes good leadership? If you have a highly talented team, good leadership might be less leadership and a shared vision might require nothing more than everyone receiving the same assignment. This mentality is what makes some poor "leaders" put themselves ahead of everyone and claim credit for everything. It wouldn't be foreign to Dilbert's pointy-haired boss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> These Jobs' hagiographies are becoming tiresome.

<comment><USER20> As are these complaints...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it's just me, but the Jobs worship on HN is getting pretty annoying.

<comment><USER20> No more that the fawning over Google, or the posting of everything Linus says in his G+ stream, or the over-the-top criticism/lack criticism of Microsoft. Here is an idea; if it bothers you that much, don't read articles about Apple or Jobs, and don't comment on them either.

Apologies for the snark, but this type of comment is lazy and pointless. Trolling at it's most insipid.

<comment><USER22> _this type of comment is lazy and pointless. Trolling at it's most insipid._

Here is an idea; if it bothers you that much, don't read it and don't comment on it either.

<comment><USER20> I see what you did there. Very clever. I do tend to avoid the fawning articles about the actors I mentioned, hence the free advice. You what you and the others posting the soporific "bored of the Jobs worship" nonsense, or downvoting without reply, miss in the article is the take away that the anecdote is offering. This is due to your views of an individual that lead a company you deem less than worthy, for whatever ideological reason. Take the protagonist out of the story and it remains a good story. But you keep on doing what you are doing. No, really, your counter point was insightful.

<comment><USER22> Hold your horses, I was just replying to your comment, not the article content.

If people like the article, they should comment with why. If people don't like it, they should likewise do so. That way people can have discussions. The "if you don't like it go somewhere else" line of thinking is vapid and the world would be worse off if everybody did that. People should challenge each other.

<comment><USER20> When some has commented " _Maybe it's just me, but the Jobs worship on HN is getting pretty annoying._ ", it is vapid, as you say and without any tangible value or merit. It's not a particularly useful or constructive discussion and it certainly doesn't "challenge" anything or anyone. It's whining, and IMHO trolling. As I pointed out, there seems to me to be as much fawning of Linus' G+ comments. As the OP of this particular branch perhaps admires Linus, he doesn't notice it as much. Cognitive bias in action. My suggestion, which I totally stand by, yet apologised for, was actually meant constructively.

<comment><USER22> _When some has commented "Maybe it's just me, but the Jobs worship on HN is getting pretty annoying.", it is vapid, as you say and without any tangible value or merit._

I disagree. It started a discussion and then you replied with how it isn't really out of line for things that people like.

 _Cognitive bias in action._

Yes, I agree. That's why it is good that the person commented and you replied. If they had just ignored the article, they wouldn't have received that information. How would anybody ever learn anything if we just read and discussed those things we already agree with?

<comment><USER20> Nothing of merit. It's wasted the time of at least three people. If the OP had kept such a petty thought to themselves, the world would be no worse off. Nothing insightful has been shared...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Will no one rid us of these Steve Job's parables. Wisdom has no correlation to success.

<comment><USER24> Since he ran the company, he must have done something right. He wasn't always right but he did have repeatable success. When he took over Apple in the late 1990's, Apple was almost dead.

Btw, here's some of his advice that I alway try to remember:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2011/05/16/steve- jo...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2011/05/16/steve-jobs-get-rid- of-the-crappy-stuff/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know about this author's history, but the connotations of "parable" in this case make it seem a bit over the top. Another Steve J.C. Jobs story; we've even given it a snicker-worthy nearly-Biblical name.

The interview snippet itself isn't bad; while I see the point he was making, it's not terribly strong or well-stated, and quite honestly it doesn't deserve its own proper name. It's worth reading, but if it had been Jobs' intention for this to be worthy of the title "parable," I'm quite sure he'd have been able to throw it back in the coffee can for another few cycles and turn it into something worth repeating.

<comment><USER26> Blah, blah, blah. It was a cool story; the man clearly had some important insight into the world and the making of a successful product. Can't we just try to take something from it instead of nit-picking?

<comment><USER18> Can't we just present the interesting insight without using religious language and deifying the man?</comment></comment></comment>


How Dungeons and Dragons somehow became more popular than ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/how-dungeons-and-dragons-somehow-became-more-popular-than-ever/2019/04/18/fc226f56-5f8f-11e9-9412-daf3d2e67c6d_story.html <comment><USER2> I think the greatest legacy of D&D are the syndication of its game mechanics into other arenas. Fantasy sports, for example, is nothing but D&D for sports fans.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish I had time to play. DMed for a time and also played. There were a few campaigns going on, so both made sense.

Quality time. High quality.

Game on people!</comment>


Ask HN: Why HN has no visible upvote number for comments? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You can track down the discussions from 6 years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2435710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2435710)

Some significant discussion was here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333)

And here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434975)

In short, it has been decided that removing the display of points against comments has reduced some undesirable behavior. The issues are complex, the arguments not entirely convincing, not everyone agrees, but the decision was taken that behavior and comment quality improved.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotally, it reduced the rewards I could receive for posting an early snarky comment on potential front page submissions. Not that I did not work hard enough crafting my snark to deserve upvotes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would Leonardo Da Vinci be using the internet? - <AUTHOR> (of course please replace  Da Vinci with any other creator / thinker as needed ... Einstein was the second I would be curious about) <comment><USER2> There would be no Da Vinci. His attention span would be so shot by constantly procrastinating and chasing click-bait articles, he wouldn't have time to delve deep into anything.

<comment><USER3> And maybe even writing posts on HN/Reddit to see a number next to his username go up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He would spend his time on Facebook

[https://images.tackk.com/mio/16358604/g34535kx/large](https://images.tackk.com/mio/16358604/g34535kx/large)

</comment><comment><USER5> Internet trolling.

</comment><comment><USER6> Studying, finding collaborators, engaging in thoughtful discussions, sharing ideas and work, blogging?</comment>


Executives – why do they always ask the hard questions? - <AUTHOR> https://www.leaninberlin.de/2019/10/executives-why-do-they-always-ask-hard.html <comment><USER2> As a pseudo executive, I think this is also a good perspective on what to expect from a meeting and avoid micromanaging problems.</comment>